After a tough start for Julen Lopetegui, West Ham fans finally have something to be optimistic about and a glimpse of the football they have long been craving.
A 4-1 win over newly-promoted Ipswich Town saw the Hammers score four goals in a Premier League match for the first time since a 4-2 win over Brentford in February.
The victory also gave West Ham their biggest winning margin in the league since last December with a 3-0 success against Wolves, while 13 shots on target was the Hammers’ best total since Opta started recording that stat in 2003-04.
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However, the club’s supporters will be wary of this being a false dawn.
Indeed, the feel-good factor at London Stadium will not last long if they fail to build on this win and underperform in games away at Tottenham and at home to Manchester United later in October.
But the win does give Lopetegui some breathing space going into the international break and eases the pressure that was building on him after their last home game, a tame 3-0 loss to Chelsea.
After seven games of the campaign, West Ham have won two, drawn two and lost three, as Saturday’s win moves a poor start to the campaign into a decent one.
‘We want to win, but we want to be entertained’
Lopetegui is undoubtedly having to deal with raised expectations.
For some West Ham fans, they are going to take some convincing that Lopetegui is an upgrade on previous boss David Moyes, a man who guided the club to their best moments in a generation.
Sixth and seventh in Moyes’ first two full seasons led to memorable European nights as they reached the Europa League semi-finals in 2021-22.
They then won the Europa Conference League, their first trophy since the 1980 FA Cup, beating Fiorentina 2-1 in Prague before 70,000 Hammers fans lined the streets of east London for the trophy parade a day later.
But there was still discontent bubbling away in the background.
The Conference League win masked a poor 2022-23 Premier League campaign that saw West Ham end 14th, scoring only 42 in 38 games.
By the end of 2023-24, the fans were split between wanting success but also a stylish brand of football. Ninth was not enough for Moyes to stay.
“We’re never going to be happy,” said West Ham season ticket holder Martyn Prager, who has supported the club since the 1960s and who was at the Eden Arena in Prague.
“We want to win, but we want to be entertained. Moyes’ brand of football was dire but we won a European cup. We were never in danger of going down and always fighting for Europe but the football was awful to watch.
“A few times coming away, even when we had won, you didn’t feel great, apart from big European nights when the place was absolutely rocking and it was fantastic.
“Because we were winning you get dragged along with it. But an awful lot of people, when it was looking like Moyes was leaving, were saying ‘be careful what you wish for because we could be going back to the days of Pellegrini’.”
So can Lopetegui win over the doubters?
With some fans unhappy at a negative, but often effective, style of football, the club were unable or unwilling to agree a new deal with Moyes as Lopetegui was named his replacement.
The early signs under the Spaniard were not encouraging. Home losses to Aston Villa, Manchester City and Chelsea led to criticism that the style of football was the same, if not worse than last season.
Last week, ex-Hammers striker Tony Cottee, speaking on TalkSport, called the managerial move from Moyes to Lopetegui “a sideways step, not a progressive step”.
“I didn’t want him [Lopetegui] in the first place. I said ‘be careful what you wish for’ – David Moyes did a superb job for West Ham,” he added.
Was this win over Ipswich a sign of a more attack-minded Hammers side?
After seven league matches, Lopetegui’s team have a lower goals-per-game ratio than last season (1.43 this campaign compared to 1.58 last year), but also fewer goals conceded (1.57-1.95 per game), more passes (410-387 per game) and more crosses (26-24.1 per game).
West Ham also received a helping hand against a naive Ipswich side, who contributed to their own downfall with defensive mistakes contributing to three of West Ham’s four goals.
But Hammers fans may be liking comments from visiting boss Kieran McKenna, when he said: “Tactically, West Ham played very differently to any team we’ve played this season. They were very direct which is what we struggled with. Michail Antonio did a fantastic job in bringing in people like Tomas Soucek.
“In the first 60 minutes it was that direct play we didn’t deal with.”
However, before West Ham fans expect to see four goals a game, McKenna did add: “They didn’t have to work too hard for their goals. We conceded some poor goals at poor times, that changed the momentum.”
Meanwhile, Lopetegui was keen to praise his side’s defensive work instead of their attacking play, but tantalisingly said: “We had a lot of chances to score, but we can do more goals.”
A CV that demands respect
This win over Ipswich buys Lopetegui more time to implement his style of coaching and, although not enough to win over all his critics, shows green shoots of recovery.
His footballing CV is also one that demands respect.
The 58-year-old, a former Spain international goalkeeper, is three years younger than Moyes, managed Porto and never lost a game in two years in charge of the Spanish national team, but was dismissed before the 2018 World Cup as it was revealed he had already agreed to become Real Madrid manager afterwards.
A failed three-month spell at Real followed, but so too a career rebuild at Sevilla, winning the Europa League in 2020, before a fine recovery job to keep Wolves in the Premier League two seasons ago.
But if he can be successful at West Ham, while entertaining the demanding fans, it would arguably be his greatest triumph. Saturday was a good start, but there is a lot more of that needed.
